Free speech is something many take for granted, yet it has been under assault for quite some time now on college campuses throughout this great nation of ours. College campuses used to be the place for free thought and the free exchange of ideas, a place where it was possible to “offend” others without worrying about receiving an unexpected punch to the face much like Hayden Williams did on the campus of UC Berkeley.
Hayden was working as a representative from the group Turning Point USA taking part in their campus outreach program when he was approached by a snowflake as we like to call them – someone who was offended by the fact that Hayden was simply exercising his right to free speech. After approaching Hayden the assailant who has since been identified and arrested by police outright punched him in the face.
This is just a microcosm of what is going on on college campuses throughout the country and many seem to have no problem with it whatsoever. There have been countless interviews conducted throughout the country in which college students go on camera openly discounting such attacks because they feel that these individuals like Hayden deserve to be assaulted simply for exercising their right to free speech. What is more ironic is that these individuals that essentially condone this type of behavior claim to be tolerant and understanding. I guess it’s safe to say the in these cases the loudest voices for tolerance come from some of the most intolerant people.
Trump Stands up for Free Speech on College Campuses
It has surely taken quite some time to get to this point, but we finally have a President willing to address the issues many face on college campuses when it comes to free speech. Today at CPAC President Trump outlined his plan to issue an executive order that would hold college campuses accountable when it comes to defending their students right to free speech or face consequences.
“We reject oppressive speech codes, censorship, political correctness and every other attempt by the hard left to stop people from challenging ridiculous and dangerous ideas. These ideas are dangerous,” Trump said. “Instead we believe in free speech, including online and including on campus.”
“Today I’m proud to announce that I will be very soon signing an executive order requiring colleges and universities to support free speech if they want federal research grants.”
Our first amendment right to free speech is under attack on college campuses throughout the country, it is up to us to ensure that free speech remains alive and gives students and every single American citizen the ability to openly discuss their thoughts and opinions without the fear of reprisal. Whether the left likes it or not “hate speech” as they like to call it is not illegal – and the more they classify principled conservative talking points as hate speech the more we will fight and we will win!
Does free speech extend to online social media platforms? Do we truly have the right to express ourselves freely on sites like Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, and other social media outlets without the fear of having our accounts suspended or banned altogether?
The debate rages on especially in the wake of the recent “Twitter purge” in which thousands of accounts that Twitter allegedly deemed to be bots or in some cases “Russian bots” were deleted. This seemed to hit the conservative Twitter accounts harder than any other accounts on the social media platform, I personally lost roughly 1,700 of my more than 60,000 followers overnight. Were they indeed “Russian bots”? The world may never know, nonetheless I did regain back nearly all of the followers I had lost, and my account continues to grow.
The Twitter purge continues as a quick Twitter search for the hashtag “TwitterPurge” brings up countless instances in which users are consistently losing hundreds if not thousands of followers every day for the past few days.
The biggest issue here is not Russian bots or fake accounts, it is Twitter’s alleged attack on the Conservative Twitter accounts and the fact that their approach to dealing with monitoring hate speech and enforcing their community guidelines doesn’t seem to be applied evenly across the political spectrum. There have been countless instances of deragatory, harassing, and even threatening Tweets posted against Conservative accounts and even against our President and those accounts are still alive and well.
We have seen first hand what the atmosphere is like on the inside at Twitter thanks to James O’Keefe’s underconver videos in which he was able to question a few Twitter employees asking them just how they police this social media platform.
Here’s what they had to say!
In this video James O’Keefe’s operation helps to expose what appears to be going on behind the scenes at Twitter. Keep in mind this is just one of the major social media platforms and this mindset seems to be running rampant throughout Silicon Valley as they all do their best to drive a narrative and silence speech they do not agree with.
For example, in this video Twitter employees speak about a practice referred to as “shadow banning” in which they implement algorithms to hide content posted by people with a specific opinion. In this case they spoke about shadow banning Conservatives and Trump supporters. This even goes as far as to giving specific Twitter employees the power to ban accounts they may not agree with.
Now that we have a little insight as to what appears to be going on behind the scenes at Twitter, the question arises – what can be done about this?
As a publicly traded company complete with a set of community guidelines that are supposed to govern how they operate. Of course these guidelines are quite vague leaving open the door for those at Twitter to implement them as they see fit.
According to Business Insider, Roger Stone intends to file an anti-trust lawsuit against Twitter for banning his account.
Roger Stone, the longtime Republican strategist and an informal adviser to President Donald Trump, plans to file an antitrust lawsuit against Twitter after the company permanently suspended his account on Saturday.
“I am going to sue Twitter on multiple grounds,” Stone told Business Insider on Sunday.
He did not elaborate when he would file the suit, and when asked what grounds he planned to sue Twitter on, he replied that he would let the suit “speak for itself when filed.”
Stone told New York magazine, which first reported the news, that he had been advised he has a “very strong legal case.”
“Twitter wants to avoid being regulated like a utility,” he told the publication. “No one has been willing to file the anti-trust case. I am.”
A lawsuit is also being filed by Jarod Taylor, an editor of a journal publication called American Renaissance.
The genesis of the suit is Twitter’s November 2017 announcement that they would start banning and sanctioning users based on their offline behavior and associations. On December 18, 2017, Twitter, five years after their top British executive described the company as “the free speech wing of the free speech party,” made good on this threat, “purging” hundreds of mostly right-wing users. Twitter’s new policy refers to association with “violent extremist groups,” and a company blog post claimed, “If an account’s profile information includes a violent threat or multiple slurs, epithets, racist or sexist tropes, incites fear, or reduces someone to less than human, it will be permanently suspended.”
One of those purged is Jared Taylor, founder and editor of “American Renaissance,” a fringe-right journal on race and immigration. He is frequently described as an “extremist” and a “white supremacist” by left-wing groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the latter of which sits on Twitter’s “Trust and Safety Council,” the largely leftist group of activists and non-profits Twitter assembled in 2016 to help decide which speech to censor.
It’s clear that Twitter has made Mr. Taylor out to be some sort of “right wing extremist” as they do most Conservative minded individuals. Jared has since filed a complaint against Twitter in an attempt to clear his name and restore his account.
Taylor is a graduate of Yale University and Paris’s Sciences Po, the former West Coast editor of PC Magazine, and author of several books. He describes himself as a “white advocate” or “race realist” and condemns Nazism and antisemitism.
According to the complaint, in his more than six years on Twitter, Taylor never made threats, harassed anyone, or otherwise came under scrutiny for his behavior on the platform. Even the SPLC notes Taylor “scrupulously avoided racist epithets [and] employed the language of academic journals” in his writings, and Taylor once wrote an article urging people to be more civil on Twitter.
As the complaint puts it:
Mr. Taylor has always expressed his views with respect and civility towards those who disagree. He has never engaged in vituperation or name-calling, on Twitter or elsewhere.
Neither Mr. Taylor nor American Renaissance has ever promoted or advocated violence, on Twitter or anywhere else. Indeed, they have urged their followers to maintain a dignified and respectful tone towards those who disagree with them. Neither Mr. Taylor nor American Renaissance is affiliated with any groups that promote or practice violence.
At no time did either Mr. Taylor’s or American Renaissance’s accounts engage in “trolling,” insults, or harassment, nor did they ever encourage anyone else to do such thing
It’s always good to er on the side of free speech and the idea that Twitter and other social media platforms are private entities therefore they should be able to operate freely and govern their social networks as they see fit.
The question becomes what happens wen that private entity becomes public, and what happens when that private entity begins shaping the news narrative and silencing the first amendment right of those whom they don’t agree with?
Should we now let government step in and begin demanding social media platforms be held accountable by government to ensure free speech is upheld? And can we rely on government to ensure that we all have a voice and we all have the ability to be heard equally?
Social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook have become powerful tools to influence opinions on a variety of topics and it shouldn’t be up to a select few within these businesses decide the narrative.
— Millennial_Conservative™ (@StephenJaniszak) August 20, 2017
It turns out the opposition to the free speech rally yesterday in Boston wasn’t as peaceful as the fake news media would like you to believe. After all lets look at this logically, there was an opposition to a rally in support of free speech and you have the mainstream media literally supporting the fact that these people were protesting our first amendment right.
Our President weighed in on the situation that unfolded in Boston.
Looks like many anti-police agitators in Boston. Police are looking tough and smart! Thank you.
Do you think the mainstream media will come out and commend President Trump for understanding the importance of the right to free speech whether we agree with it or not? Instead we have various media outlets looking to continue the race baiting narrative as they push their agenda to continue dividing this nation.
These media outlets looked to the Boston Free Speech like a win for groups like Antifa when in reality no one “won” in Boston yesterday as our first amendment right to free speech took a major blow.
The purveyor of more fake news than any other so called journalists is calling on the President to wait for the facts to come in when we all watched on TV as the masked Antifa protesters were attacking police officers. Due to the fact that the “alt-right” or “right wing” groups had already vacated the premises the media outlets couldn’t blame the violence on anyone but groups they support. As a result they ignored it altogether.
The Police department was literally tweeting out asking these rioters (they’re not protesters, they are rioters) to “refrain from throwing urine, bottles, and other harmful projectiles at our officers.” Where was the reporting on this?
The more we see this type of behavior unfold on the streets of this country, the more it will embolden those that stand for the Constitution and the rule of law. It is up to us to call out these “anti-fascists” for who they are and expose their actions for what they are, CRIMINAL. If the media will not report accurately and journalists will not do their jobs and report on the facts we must expose the left, the Democrats, and their tactics for what they are.
"We're #Antifa & we DEMAND that free speech is limited to the views WE find acceptable. Disagree? We'll use VIOLENCE against you"#Bostonpic.twitter.com/j7FrtloxbZ
We have come to a tipping point in this country! We are literally watching a group referred to as Antifa or “anti-fascist” try and restrict others right to free speech. It is literally mind blowing that more people haven’t awakened to the fact that those that call themselves “anti-fascist” are actually employing fascist tactics to reduce or eliminate our Constitutional rights. What makes this even worse is the endorsement that Antifa has from the mainstream media and no one is willing to call them out for it.
— Millennial_Conservative™ (@StephenJaniszak) August 19, 2017
#CNNisAntifa
This type of rhetoric should disturb you far more than any person simply exercising their right to free speech. When you have media outlets literally justifying the use of violence because the fascist demands of a group like Antifa haven’t been met you are largely to blame for any violence that ensues.
Antifa are the Fascists
It’s time we start exposing Antifa for the fascists they really are. We need to get out there and expose the media and their narrative to justify the behavior by this group and help people realize what a true fascist is.
There you have it those that call themselves the anti-fascists are literally using fascist tactics to get what it is they want. And what they want is a authoritarian style government hence why the Democrats refuse to denounce them and why they idolize individuals like Bernie Sanders who openly called for a revolution in this country. Unless we can get people to wake up to the threat posed by Antifa and the fact that they are affiliated with the Democrat party and lauded by the fake news media we will only see an increase in violence.
It’s a damn good thing we have the Constitution we have here in the United States because you can rest assured that we would soon be seeing the same type of speech police tactics here that are destroying most of Europe.
On Tuesday, German police raided the homes of 36 people accused of posting “hateful” content on social media. The content in question includes allegedly racist posts and threats.
The raids largely targeted individuals associated with far-right movements hostile to immigration.
“But the raids also targeted two people accused of left-wing extremist content, as well as one person accused of making threats or harassment based on someone’s sexual orientation,” reportsThe New York Times.
The majority of aggression from authorities when dealing with monitoring and regulating speech is geared towards what they like to call the “far-right extremists”, although take notice that the NY Times had to step in and try and make it like they are also trying to regulate speech from those on the left as well. This is a typical tactic that we saw take place shortly after the shooting of House Rep Steve Scalise a couple of weeks ago. The left tries to create a guise in which there is this alleged balance of rhetoric and violence coming from both sides, when in reality that couldn’t be further from the truth.
“The measure, championed by Justice Minister Heiko Maas for passage this month, would fine Facebook, Twitter and other outlets up to $53 million (50 million euros) if they failed to remove hate speech and other forms of illegal content,” notes The Times, adding:
Under German law, social media users are subject to a range of punishments for posting illegal material, including a prison sentence of up to five years for inciting racial hatred.
Under the draft statute, networks must offer a readily available complaint process for posts that may amount to threats, hate speech, defamation, or incitement to commit a crime, among other offenses.
Social media outlets would have 24 hours to delete “obviously criminal content” and a week to decide on more ambiguous cases. The law, approved by Germany’s cabinet in April, would be enforced with fines of up to $53 million.
From twisting the arms of social media companies to censor and erase “hate speech” to raiding the homes of social media posters accused of posting “hate speech,” the German government is ironically sabotaging its own democratic ideals as a way to safeguard against fascist impulses.
So not only are they literally arresting people in Germany for alleged hate speech posted to online outlets such as Twitter and Facebook, they are taking it a step further and attempting to fine those outlets for providing the arena for the free speech to take place. This should disturb everyone around the world as free speech is something we should all hold dear as it is the perfect gauge to truly understand where a person stands on a topic along with the ability to see how crazy some people truly are.
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